Friday, June 30

'Say Whut?' Babelfishing for the mot juste

Thanks to the many visitors from non-native English speaking countries, I just added Babelfish to the top of the page, over there to the right, to ease translations. Please give it a try, and let me know just how badly cutting-edge technology can mangle language.

But no. No, not as badly as many Israeli spokespersons do when addressing the foreign media, and quite often in a dialect that, actually, almost resembles English...

Lesse', there was Dalia Yitzik to the UK's Court of St. James. That was a good one. Late (and deeply missed) Jerusalem Post colleague Sam Orbaum ripped into Itzik on her "hibroo"; Defense Minister Amir Peretz speaking (sic) at The Rabin Center in something English-istic (hat tip to OneJerusalem). Myself, I was always partial to Vice Premier Shimon Peres' "piss pro-sess."

This example by Gil Hoffman at The Jerusalem Post was written back in 2001. Has anything changed? Got any better examples? There must be bazillions...

3 comments:

Hmmm, I can't see any option for translating / babelfish. But fortunately I am able to read English quite well - even if I have to confess that speaking / writing is a little bit more difficult, because I use my English not very often.

Ah... now it's here. Wow, that's --- art. Dada, maybe. I just read your latest articel "Gay Black Jewish Klansmen" in German. Hmmm, I have to confess that I didn't understand a word. But that has to be my bad German ;-). But, fortunately, I can switch back to my, also bad, English. And then I get it.

No, I think babelfish is okay to get the meaning of an (easy) text which uses only "common words".